But when I got closer, I realized I was mistaken. Turns out that Miller was still involved in the fair, since companies are not granted the beer concession without being sponsors. And Miller Beer was still being sold. The difference was that this year they toned down their visible presence at the fair. They didn’t withdraw their sponsorship — they just made it less obvious. Which must have been a difficult decision for the company’s marketing department: The whole point behind sponsoring events like these is to get the opportunity for all the free adverstising and branding, by slapping your logo as big as possible throughout the event. But now, the big logo-banners were removed, and the only branding was on the small price-list sign.

But wait — what are all those other beers doing there? Could it be that Miller is not sponsoring the fair after all, and that it is simply one of many competing brands for sale?

A quick bit of research revealed the truth: Every single one of the beers offered for sale at the fair were in fact brands owned by Miller.

So, despite the apparent wide variety of different beers being offered, they’re still basically all Miller products.

Scenes like this are why Miller decided to tone down its corporate branding. In previous years, this “San Francisco handshake” would have featured a big Miller logo on the banner in the background (instead of the tiny Miller logo visible on the price list). In fact, I think it was photos like this from my previous report that convinced Miller to remove its oversized branding from the Folsom events.

Furthermore, Miller decided to remove its logos from the beer cups as well, to forestall any more embarrassing photos like this one would have been. (Again, last year, I had several photos of Miiler Beer cups in embarrassing situations.

But I don’t think SABMiller is going to cave in to any further pressure to withdraw their sponsorship. After all, not only do they sponsor the Folsom Street Fair and the Up Your Alley Fair, but they also sponsor the much more extreme, paid-admission adults-only “Bay of Pigs” party, which I’m quite sure makes the public fairs look tame by comparison. If SABMiller has no qualms about events like that, then they certainly aren’t going to be scared off of the street fairs. Furthermore, Folsom Street Events issued a press release saying they weren’t going to allow the pressure from religious groups to dissaude them in any way, and that they’d fight to keep their sponsors.

So, I’d confirmed that Miller was still a main sponsor of the fair, and had exclusive rights to the beer concession. That answered my first question. But what about the next question on my list: Had the sexually explicit nature of the Folsom events been toned down at all from the previous year? Time to find out.

Wall-to-Wall Humanity

I’m posting this picture not because it shows anything interesting, but rather just to set the scene for what is to follow. The fair was packed. Wall-to-wall humanity for about three or four solid blocks.

There was absolutely no privacy anywhere, no out-of-the-way corner to hide. Just keep that in mind as you view the rest of the report. Everything shown in the following pictures happened in the midst of this crowd, not in a private area.

And remember that this fair is completely free, and open to the public without any admission charge, and is held on public city streets.

Oh, and this is your absolute last chance to turn back. Ready?

Total Toilet Pig

Shortly after arriving, I encountered my first evidence that the Up Your Alley Fair deserved its reputation. In plain view on the public sidewalk, a man in a helmet was performing oral sex on two men simultaneously, while just a few feet away two other men were going at it hot and heavy.

The man in the helmet had the words “Total Toilet Pig” written on his back, and a cup bearing the phrase “Got Piss?” which obliging passersby had partly filled with urine.

A man with a “FUCK” belt-buckle (and not much else) loomed close with his penis. Did he want a blowjob? As it turns out — no. He had other things in mind.

He let loose a stream of urine onto Total Toilet Pig’s neck.

He proceeded to give Total Toilet Pig a good soaking. Notice the color difference between his cup of beer and the liquid in Total Toilet Pig’s cup, confirming my suspicion that it was in fact urine.

Total Toilet Pig didn’t seem to mind. In fact, it looked like he was enjoying it — after all, he was a total toilet pig.

It was only after the stream of urine started to get all wobbly, spraying this way and that, that I realized I had leaned in rather too close in pursuit of the perfect picture, so I quickly backed up to avoid becoming an accidental total toilet pig myself.

I should have known this was on the agenda. When FUCK’s piss had slowed to a dribble, Total Toilet Pig turned and gave him a good cleaning.

Afterwards, as a digestif, Total Toilet Pig savored his cup of anonymous urine.

Whew! That was heavy. Time for some comic relief.

Hallelujah, It’s Raining (Se)Men

On Dore Alley itself (the street after which the fair was originally named — The Dore Alley Fair), a window overlooked the crowd below.

As I was walking past, a naked man appeared in the window and began masturbating. Hundreds of people on the street below took notice and gave him whoops of encouragement.

This public attention made him more and more excited and before long he began to ejaculate out the window.

I provide this close-up to prove, beyond any doubt, that he was indeed ejaculating onto the people on the sidewalk below.

Semen was raining down.

Spurt after spurt flew out of the window. I instinctively took a step back, but in truth I was too far away to get hit.

The crowd went wild. They cheered through his entire orgasm. The weirdest part of all was that he seemed to keep his eyes open the whole time.

Again, another close-up for the Doubting Thomases.

As it came to a close, the window sill was dripping semen.

After he was done and retreated inside after waving to his fans, another man looked out of the window to see who had gotten splattered (luckily, not me).

Where Were the Police?

After my Folsom Street Fair report last year, the question I got asked most often was: Where were the police? Isn’t public sex illegal in San Francisco? In order to stave off a similar barrage of questions this time around, I present the following pictures.

The police were there. You can see them at the upper left in this picture. Mostly they seemed to stay on the periphery.

There were several entrances to the fair, and a few police were stationed at most of them (though the one I entered through was unmanned). Here are three cops at a popular entrance on Folsom Street.

But in no case did I see any actual policemen inside the fair area (several city blocks). The closest I saw any cop to being “in” the fair was this one who stood about two feet inside the entrance.

Mostly they just stood around impassively. They didn’t even react to the many people there who wore faux police uniforms (such as the guy in the foreground).

I can only assume that the police were on order to not interfere witht the goings-on inside the fair area, however illegal they might otherwise be. Some of the sex acts shown on this page were within plain sight of policemen loitering nearby. Is it city policy to allow a temporary “law-free zone” inside the Up Your Alley and Folsom Street fairs? I don’t know. But it sure seems that way.

These guys were humping right up against a barrier that the police had installed earlier.

Feeling Horny

Right in the center of the street, a guy with devil horns was getting a frenzied blow job from a guy with a shaved head. They quickly drew a crowd of shutterbugs.

Some light testicle torture was next on the agenda.

Then he took matters into his own hands and pressed the guy’s face into his crotch as far as it would go.

Sausage, anyone?

Orgasm Dude

I happened upon this five-way encounter: three guys performing oral sex on two recipients.

Someone with a “Beer Nuts” hat walked by at that very moment — especially appropriate considering the next image below.

Suddenly, the man on the left started having a very vocal and very obvious orgasm.

Orgasm Dude moaned and groaned as everyone turned to look.

The man on the receiving end did his best to swallow at first…

But he then allowed the rest of the ejaculation to roam free in the open air.

Here’s a close-up from the previous photo, to dispel any doubts about what was going on.

He finished the job by hand.

A final close-up for those those who still cling to thoughts of “This can’t possibly be happening in public.”

The human face can be so expressive.

The guy to Orgasm Dude’s right reached for his penis…

…and slurped up any leftovers.

And where were the police during all this? Why, right next door! Smoking a big cigar. (Note: Fetish costume. Not actual police uniform.)

Many of the beneficiaries from the fair’s vendor proceeds were AIDS-related organizations. And various AIDS-themed booths were stationed around the fair — such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation seen here on the left. And yet, right next door was another booth unapologetically selling “barebacking” porn videos. Since barebacking (having sex without a condom) is considered a major factor in the spread of AIDS in the gay community, one wonders if anyone noticed the inconsistency of the message. And considering that I did not see a single condom being used all day in any of the sexual encounters I witnessed, I doubted the efficacy of holding a fair like this to raise money for AIDS groups. It was almost like hosting a Gamblers Anonymous convention in a casino.

Crotch-cam

So much was happening so fast that I quickly became overwhelmed. Every time I paused to take a picture of some scene, I would notice out of the corner of my eye three other photo opportunities slipping away. Furthermore, a lot of the action seemed to be going on at crotch level, which wasn’t always clearly visible from normal camera-taking heights, in the crush of the crowd. Because of these factors, I eventually decided to set the camera shutter on “auto-repeat,” let my hand (holding the camera) dangle down by my hip, and just snap away at random as I passed through the crowd, without really seeing what I was photographing. It was only later, after I uploaded the pictures at home, did I browse through these “crotch-cam” shots to see what I captured. Most of them were blurry and at odd angles, but they did present an interesting view of the Up Your Alley Fair from crotch level. And so I present for you here, without captions, a selection of crotch-cam highlights, snapped at random:

Hernia sufferer or practitioner of scrotal inflation? Only his doctor knows for sure.

Piss Cop

Hello, what’s this? A man seems to be urinating on someone’s leg.

Why, he’s a New York City policeman. Or at least he’s dressed like one.

Something seemed odd about the way the urine was coming out of his penis — it didn’t shoot out completely straight, but emerged in three seperate streams or dribbles. I went in for a closer look.

Turns out the Piss Cop was a practitioner of a mild form of genital splitting, in which the urethra is cut open along the underside of the glans or penis.

I didn’t notice until after looking at these pictures later that the man on the right already had urine-soaked pants from a previous incident (on the insides of his legs).

I suppose his fetish must be “letting people walk up and piss on me.”

Put the Bone In

More window action: A naked guy (possibly the same one we saw earlier, or not — I couldn’t tell) appeared at a window overlooking the crowd holding a plastic bone in his hand. Can you guess where it’s headed?

He probed for an opening. The crowd below shouted encouragements.

This guy really takes the expression “getting boned” literally.

Successful insertion was followed by some vigorous wanking.

Windows 3.0

In yet a third defenestration from the same building, a short time later another man ejaculated (or at least tried to ejaculate) out the window onto the crowd below, as partiers on a nearby balcony watched. I was pretty far away at the time, and took this photo with a zoom lens, so I couldn’t see exactly how things turned out, sperm-wise.

And just to prove that this wasn’t some out-of-the-way corner with no one around: As you can see from this shot, the street below the windows was packed solid with people.

Pleased to Meet You

One of my “crotch-cam” shots captured the moment when one man walked up to another and introduced himself by bending down and…well, the picture explains it better than I ever could. I was standing just inches away when it happened.

I stepped back and raised the camera to see what would happen next. The two new friends then engaged in a more traditional “San Francisco handshake.”

After this introduction, he went down on his knees and got to business.

Notice the sign for the beer booth in the background. In previous years, it would have said “MILLER BEER,” leading to some unfortunate photo opportunities (unfortunate from Miller’s perspective). They were wise to tone down the visibility of their sponsorship.

Other photographers got interested as the action got hot and heavy.

After a while, the recipient emitted some noises that seemed to indicate he was starting to have an orgasm. He raised his bag to block his face while this was happening.

Luckily, in this case, the ejaculation remained well-contained inside a bodily orifice.

If only more people followed your lead, I wouldn’t have to keep dodging out of the way of these precious bodily fluids!